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Is Your Teen Getting Enough Sleep?

How much sleep does a teenager need? Experts say, on average, adolescents between age 12 and 18 need close to nine hours of sleep each day. However, they rarely get this much. Advertising Policy Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland … Read More

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If your teen is struggling with excessive sleepiness, it can cause impaired memory and inhibited creativity — making it difficult to learn. Your teen’s metabolism, immune system and cardiovascular system can be affected and sleep deprivation can even cause depression and difficulty coping with stress and emotions.

Why teens lack sleep

Here are some possible reasons teens may be lacking sleep:

Technology, caffeine and socializing. Teens may spend hours texting, downloading music, gaming, social networking and watching videos online – often while drinking caffeinated beverages. Add late-night social activities, pressures from school work and after-school jobs to the mix, and teens are living a lifestyle that puts sleep on a back-burner.

Delayed ‘inner clock.’ In up to 10-15 percent of adolescents, the body’s inner clock gradually shifts to keeping delayed time. These teens do not feel sleepy at all at 10 or 11 p.m. Rather, their bodies begin to feel sleepy around 1 or 2 a.m. So too, their bodies want to get up at 9 or 10 a.m., rather than 6 or 7 a.m.

Lack of information. Most teens are unaware of their own need for sleep. Parents may tend to supervise them less, producing a vicious “late-to-bed, late-to-rise” cycle. The end result: sleepiness in school and weekend catch-up sleep, typically after Friday “all-nighters.”

How you can help

7 practical tips to help teens get better sleep include:

Look at his or her school, after-school and work schedules and cut down on non-essential activities

Keep consistent sleep and wake-up times, even on weekends

Avoid high-energy activities within three hours of bedtime

Remove TV sets, computers, cell phones and video games from the bedroom

Eliminate or reduce caffeine consumption

Set a curfew on late-night TV and use of cell phones, computers, etc.

Hang heavy drapes if there is too much outside light in the bedroom

If your teen makes these changes but continues to oversleep for more than a few months, contact your doctor about a sleep evaluation. Sleep evaluations often reveal the presence of a sleep disorder, often going on for much longer than parents initially suspected.

Untreated sleep disorders

It’s important to address a suspected sleep disorder because if left untreated, they are associated with the following: